THE TRAGIC end of Comrade Abiodun Aremu via a hit-and-run vehicle does not in any way distract from fully appreciating the role he played in the working-class movement and struggle to improve the lot of the working masses over a period of four decades plus. The peak period was the struggle to end military dictatorship and the renewed struggle against the civilian wing of the ruling class as they seized the paraphernalia and instruments of power in the 4th Republic. This was only to further pauperize the working masses through the unrepentant imposition of mass misery and poverty, as they posit that there is no other way forward than to hand the state and economy to capitalist sharks. These sharks continue to tear us into shreds as mincemeat to feed the greed for profits by a tiny number of the members of the billionaire’s club, Western and Chinese capital mongrels.
Aremson rightly recognized that the problem with Nigeria, and indeed neocolonial Africa, was its continued bondage in the prism of capitalism. Through the IMF/World Bank dictates of deregulation and privatization, government after government imposes the same failed prescription of social cuts, mass unemployment, poverty wages, devaluation, and inflation. None of the goals of transforming or diversifying the economy have been achieved after close to five decades of no brake applied to the rabid impositions of neoliberal capitalism as a panacea on the economy, with its attendant scorecard of total failure.
Aremson, like many other organized Marxists, also drew the right conclusion for a turn to politics; however, unlike these turncoat so-called “friends of the masses” both in the labour movement and outside of it, politics was the building of a political party with which the working masses can confront the ruling class, not joining a party of the millionaires and billionaires but building a party for the millions of the working masses.
Aremson duly recognized the above on the grounds of his subscription to the ideas of Marxism and, as a consequence, defined his path of struggle as organizing the working class to resist and arrive at the necessary socialist consciousness with which to contend with the ruling class and wrestle power from its grip.
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Through its role and work in the Kolagbodi Foundation, Aremson organized yearly lectures, gathering the cream of the larger working-class movement to decipher the state of the labour movement, setting an agenda and task for the working-class movement in pursuit of a movement conscious of itself and its capability and historical destiny, under the right philosophical framework of the ideas of Marxism.
The first decade of the 21st century for the working class in Nigeria can rightly be characterized as the decade of “General Strikes” and Resistance against deregulation. As the trade union movement provided the leadership with which the working masses locked horns unendingly with the ruling class, resisting its push to deregulate and privatize the oil and gas industry, and hand over the wealth of the country to private profiteers and international capital at the expense of the wellbeing of the working masses. The strikes were near insurrections and an outright mass pronouncement of a rejection of the ruling class.
While “Socialism was pronounced dead”, many so-called socialists jumped ship, becoming “born again” against Marxism and welcoming themselves in full embrace of “liberal democracy” and the triumphant reign and permanent dominance of capital worldwide. “The end of history” was announced, so also “The end of class struggle”.
On the strength of these struggles and strike actions, the key lesson was drawn that Class Struggle ultimately is Politics. Since no matter the power of the General Strike to ground society temporarily, the ruling class returns to continue to exercise power, and after the respite returns again to attack the living conditions of the working masses, knocking them harder than before and inevitably eroding whatever gains were won by workers in the last struggle. This vital lesson of posing the question of power was in itself the basis for the betrayal of the working masses. As labour leaders, even having come under pressure to register a party, dished it to join the ranks of the bourgeois and contest under their parties to come into power. From leaders of the mass movement they became “friends of the masses” acting on behalf of the ruling class against the overall interest of the working masses. A direct consequence of the failure to build a mass party of the working masses to take on the ruling class.
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Aremson, like many other organized Marxists, also drew the right conclusion for a turn to politics; however, unlike these turncoat so-called “friends of the masses” both in the labour movement and outside of it, politics was the building of a political party with which the working masses can confront the ruling class, not joining a party of the millionaires and billionaires but building a party for the millions of the working masses.
This is why Aremson is not a mere “friend of the masses”, like the many so-called pro-democracy fighters claiming credentials of struggle and attendance at the barricade who have assumed power in various forms, without fundamentally making any difference in the life of the working masses; if anything, they have further entrenched the perpetuation of agonizing misery.
Who Then Is Aremson?
Aremson is a socialist. He counts among the very few countable numbers of Socialists who, despite his Stalinist background, remained committed to the cause of socialism. The collapse of the Stalinist bureaucracy and the disintegration of the former Soviet Union followed a series of events among which include the Yanayev coup in 1991 with Gorbachev as the last ruler.
While “Socialism was pronounced dead”, many so-called socialists jumped ship, becoming “born again” against Marxism and welcoming themselves in full embrace of “liberal democracy” and the triumphant reign and permanent dominance of capital worldwide. “The end of history” was announced, so also “The end of class struggle”.
While we cannot say he converted and fully subscribed to Leon Trotsky’s prognosis in his classic Revolution Betrayed (written in 1936) with regards to what happened in the Soviet Union, therein he identified that the isolation of the Russian Revolution in backward Russia, and the failure of a successful revolution in the west, provided Stalin with the oxygen to head the bureaucracy that was in turn to behead the revolution.
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Trotsky had insisted that a political revolution was needed to overthrow the bureaucracy and restore workers democracy, thereon instituting workers control and management over the means of production and wealth of society; otherwise, it was only a question of time for the victory of the counter-revolution and capitalism would be restored.
The 2027 General elections are knocking on the door. Aremson would love nothing else, and indeed would insist that we take up this task as the best means to celebrate his exit. Is the Labour Party reclaimable with Peter Obi’s exit from it? Can the Labour Party be repositioned to be a party of struggle for the working masses to contend with all the wings of the ruling class? Are there any other parties, or individuals, or groups? The need for a united front of the left to take on the bourgeoisie and the whole of the ruling class in a struggle for power.
Somehow Aremson found the logic, the right one at that, to continue to be a Socialist, and he must be applauded for this singular feat. And this he was till the very end. At one of his last gatherings, he had called for the Joint Action Front (JAF), to become the JAF Party. Putting voice to the need for a nucleus of left activists acting together and functioning as a political unit in the struggle for actualizing a mass party built on a Socialist Alternative manifesto. More than ever before, this is the task before the working class, trade unionists, and socialists today.
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With another successful coup in Madagascar, surreptitiously on the back of a successful working-class youth-led revolt against the Rajoelina regime and all of the increasing messianic crowning of Ibrahim Traore of Bukina Faso, there are growing illusions in the military. This in turn is undermining the working masses and its revolutionary strength to take on the ruling class and not have its power hijacked or usurped. The struggle against capitalism and imperialism is a struggle only the working masses, with working-class leadership and programme, can alone accomplish, of course with the support and solidarity of workers internationally.
There is the urgent need to organize the working masses to pose the question of power in its own terms and programmes to transform society and country for the benefit of the working masses.
The 2027 General elections are knocking on the door. Aremson would love nothing else, and indeed would insist that we take up this task as the best means to celebrate his exit. Is the Labour Party reclaimable with Peter Obi’s exit from it? Can the Labour Party be repositioned to be a party of struggle for the working masses to contend with all the wings of the ruling class? Are there any other parties, or individuals, or groups? The need for a united front of the left to take on the bourgeoisie and the whole of the ruling class in a struggle for power.
This is Aremson’s assignment to those of us still alive: to find the strength to continue to act and struggle and as well grow the Socialist consciousness for a revolutionary upturn of capitalism.
Comrade Tolar writes for and on behalf of Movement for a Socialist Alternative
